


AILUROMANCY (The Ballad of Caleb Widogast and the Meowty Nein)

by Mikkeneko



Series: Catleb and the Meowty Nein [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caduceus and Molly at the same time because I said so, Caleb is not coping very well, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Involuntary shapeshifting, Panic Attacks, as in small dead animals and hairballs, cat-level grossness, everyone's a cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 10:30:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17558702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: Caleb does love cats, that much is true. But right now, in this moment, struggling to keep out of sight and keep them all safe and together and get food and shelter and a plan for the futurewith eight rambunctious enchanted cats underfootconstantly tripping him and trying to climb up him and meowing incessantly for his attention, he thinks he would rather have nothing in the world than less cats and more friends again.Or: Everyone except Caleb gets turned into a cat. Caleb doesn't enjoy it as much as one might think.





	AILUROMANCY (The Ballad of Caleb Widogast and the Meowty Nein)

**Author's Note:**

> There is absolutely no plot here, no story, no catharsis, it is literally just 5k of Caleb chasing cats around. After the sledgehammer of feels that was ep 48 and 49, I needed something like this.

Here are some facts about Caleb Widogast: he is not very strong, he is very smart, and he loves cats more than people.

Here are some truths about Caleb Widogast:

He's about as strong as any man; it's only that he's gotten so used to traveling around with a group of people who could pick him up and break him in half that he finds it better not to enter into contests of strength with them. It's only that he finds it more convenient to feign weakness whenever the question of picking and carrying comes up so as to better conserve his strength for his own ends. He's as strong as any ordinary man but now, as he struggles to set camp all by himself, to carry gear for seven and pitch a tent meant for four, he desperately wishes that he were stronger.

He is smart, that much is true. But he was never as smart as he used to believe himself, smart enough to hold the way of the whole world in his head and think himself master of it, smart enough to be * _so sure_ * what was right and what was wrong and how to go about making the wrong into right. He knows he's not as smart as he once believed, and right at this minute he knows he's not as smart as he needs to be: a truly smart person would have already figured out how to remove this curse afflicting his friends, set the wrong to rights, return them to their proper shapes.

He does love cats, that much is true. But right now, in this moment, struggling to keep out of sight and keep them all safe and together and get food and shelter and a plan for the future _with eight rambunctious enchanted cats underfoot_  constantly tripping him and trying to climb up him and meowing incessantly for his attention, he thinks he would rather have nothing in the world than less cats and more friends again.

"Why did you all have to go poking around in an enchanter's lair," Caleb mumbles as he shovels away at the ground, digging a firepit. "Why did you have to touch something you didn't even know what it was? Why did you have to set off an arcane trap? And why, in Ioun's name, did I have to be outside when this happened?!"

If he'd been turned into a cat with the rest of them, after all, he wouldn't have to be dealing with this now.

An inquisitive furred nose pokes its way under his shovel blade -- _again_  -- and Caleb suppresses an urge to scream as he shoos Fjord away _again_ . In truth it is only three of them that are making such pests of themselves. Jester has become a beautiful cream-colored cat with powder-blue points on her elegant face, paws and ears; she winds circling around his ankles around him while meowing _endlessly_  in a raucous voice. Molly's fur is longer, fluffy and shaggy in black and brown patterns where it's not ragged with scars; his favorite game is to roll on his back on top of Caleb's feet and lie there with his paws waving in the air, inviting Caleb to pet his belly.

Fjord is not as clingy or demanding of attention as either of the ex-tieflings; the short-haired, handsome, black-and-white tuxedo cat simply can't resist getting involved in _whatever_  Caleb is trying to do. He jumped on the tent while Caleb struggled to set it up, got under the wheels of the cart as Caleb tried to conceal it for the night, poked his nose into stack of wood and kindling that Caleb was _trying to light._  It is now an hour to sundown, less than twelve hours since they'd approached the enchanter's lair in the nearby town, and Caleb's already at his wits' end.

The other cats he'd suddenly acquired are around somewhere, less underfoot but just as troublesome in their own way. Beau is the opposite of clingy; she'd laid her ears back and hissed when his hand had approached her. But the skinny cat with the gorgeous golden-brown fur lying close and short against her skin has a seemingly boundless well of energy and enthusiasm to destroy every piece of equipment they own. She's sharpening her claws on the axle of the cart right now while the enormous, muscular cat with the long brindled black and white fur sits on the top of the cart and looks down at her with a regal air.

Nott is nowhere to be seen and worry for her occupies a constant corner of his mind as he tries to work. The little furless cat with the wrinkled skin and protruding yellow eyes had caterwauled and cried when Caleb first tried to approach her to pick her up on the floor of the enchanter's workshop with the sharp ozone stink of recent magic heavy in the air. She'd finally consented to let him lift her, shivering as she pushed her way under the collar of his coat, but she'd disappeared as soon as he'd stopped in this graveyard and dropped all their bags and he has no notion where she's hiding.

At least four of the seven cats have dogged his footsteps literally everywhere he's gone today, _i_ _ncluding_  when he attempted to slip away for a private pit stop in a copse of nearby trees. Three cats followed him the entire time, staring with round curious eyes and ignoring his attempts to chase them away, and he eventually had to give up.

He dearly, _devoutly_  hopes that they do not remember this when they change back, or else Jester for one is _never_  going to let him hear the end of it.

Caduceus at least is not making trouble for him; the huge, skinny white cat with attenuated, elfin ears and face is simply asleep. Remarkably he manages to be asleep on top of whatever item Caleb needs next to set up their little camp: first the tent, then the haversack, then in the _bucket_  that Caleb needs to draw water with. He seems to have an uncanny instinct for whatever Caleb needs the most next and his size belies how skinny he looks: he's a heavy, difficult weight to move.

Finally, the chores done and the camp set up, Caleb allows himself to slump down on a stone in front of the fire and let exhaustion take him. It is getting dark fast and he stares out past the circle of firelight at the quickly fading silhouettes of trees and mausoleums and tombstones.

The spot he picked for them to go to ground in is, appropriately enough, a graveyard. He -- and later he and Nott -- had camped out in many graveyards in their time on the road; they were places that tended to be undisturbed by nosy civilians and strict Crownsguards. And yes, that sometimes meant you had to fight a revenant zombie or two, but it's much easier to fight a zombie than it is to fight local law enforcement. Lawmasters care a lot more about dead cops than about dead zombies.

"What am I doing?" he mumbles aloud. Eight sets of ears prick in his direction at the sound of his voice but of course none of them can answer. Molly and Jester both get up and come over to him apparently under the impression now that his hands are empty and he's sitting still, _clearly_ this is an appropriate time to petition him for attention.

He buries his head in his hands. The entire time he's been with this group of misfits, the Mighty Nein, it has always been with the knowledge that he can leave at any time. That he can take Nott and go, or just _go_ , if things get too bad or if his goals and the group's diverge at any time. It would hurt, but he is an old friend to pain.

Now, there is no walking away from this. It's one thing to walk away knowing that the group will be fine without him, perhaps even better than fine; it is impossible knowing that he is the only chance his friends will have at being restored to their bodies. If he does not help them no one can, and he doesn't even know _how_.

He tried Counterspell, and it glanced off. He tried Dispel Magic, and he felt _something_  happen but in the end it fizzled without turning back so much as a hair. Whatever magic the sorcerer was using, it's either a kind he's never encountered before -- a kind that responds to none of the traditional methods -- or it's a power level far above his own.

What do they even know about this foe? They hadn't gotten far in their infiltration of the workshop before setting off the disastrous spell that disabled all of his companions. What if this enchanter is connected in some way to the Cerberus Assembly? What if _he's_  involved? What if there's a report on its way to Rexxentrum _right now_  that will bring the Assembly and all their enforcers down on his head?

He can't defend them against _that._  He can't, he can't, he can't. He can't even defend himself that was the whole reason why he joined up with the Mighty Nein in the first place, to try to add their strength to his own, but now it's just _him_  and he's too weak and he's too stupid and he can't --

He can't breathe. There's a ligature around his throat like a noose drawing tight, a weight on his chest pressing the air out of his lungs, and he can't see past the stars in his eyes and he's hyperventilating but not getting any _air_  and he can't --

A loud _meow_  by his ears startles him out of his trance and he jumps, but not far because he's weighted down in every direction by soft, warm, furry bodies. Caduceus is stretched across his legs, Molly is draped over his lap, a large warm lump against the small of his back can only be Yasha. Fjord is on his shoulder poking his nose into Caleb's ear, and it was his meow that made him flinch.

Jester climbs up his chest like a goat scaling a rock face, somehow finding enough horizontal support despite his upright posture. She puts her face right up against his own and sniffs, giving him a clear close-up view of her slightly cross-eyed lilac eyes, and then she starts busily washing his face.

He has to laugh, which shakes the cats but does not disturb them; Fjord puts out claws to keep his balance that make him wince. "Am I still too dirty for your liking, that you have decided to give me a bath?" he asks Jester, then pulls away with a wince as the sandpaper rasp of her tongue begins to sting. "Okay, please stop. That is very painful."

He tries scratching behind Jester's ears and that at least distracts her, rubbing her head at all angles against his hand and purring ecstatically. Molly digs a soft paw (without claws, thankfully) into his thigh, meowing until Caleb relents and begins petting him too. The fears haven't gone away but they don't seem so looming, so all-consuming, with five furry bodies draped over him and a purring bundle of warm fur in each hand.

An ominous _rrrrrr_  sound catches his attention and he looks up, blinking to adjust his eyes. It's full dark now, the light from the fire providing the only illumination in their little camp and the shifting red light is not easy to see by. He spots Beau sitting a few feet away from the rest with her back to them, ears back and tip of her tail flicking as she pointedly ignores them. And over to the left --

A paler blur resolves itself into Nott, creeping closer with her shining yellow eyes huge in her head. She meows again and the vocalization sounds strange, almost underwater, but he doesn't realize what that means until --

"Oh no," Caleb says but he's not fast enough to deter her; she comes to a stop by his leg and drops the bloodied back half of a bird directly on his foot.

He swears in Zemnian, hissing softly between his teeth because if he shouts he'll disturb them, and it's not her fault she is just doing what cats do. Trying to provide for him, no doubt, albeit in the most disgusting possible way; even in her new form she is still Nott.

"Thank you, my friend," he said, unsuccessfully trying to remove the gory remains from his shoe. The rest of his friends all crowd around it, sniffing interestedly. "I suppose you are trying to tell me it is time for dinner?"  


* * *

 

Dinner that night turns into its own set of trials. Honestly Caleb is a little vague on what cats eat -- real cats, not fae facsimiles. He hasn't had a real cat since childhood, when it was mostly someone else doing the work of care. The time he'd tried to get Frumpkin to drink milk had not gone so well, but that was all right as he does not have any milk on hand anyway. But they do have meat. Cats eat meat, right?

Not these cats, apparently. He digs out the Mighty Nein's remaining food stores -- they have a fair amount on hand, since they'd planned to be on the road for another week -- and looks through them. Jerky, smoked sausage, half a dozen stale muffins, bread, cheese, a bundle of unmarked but _probably_  not poisonous toadstools, vinegar, fruit preserves, salt.

The toadstools and jam are obviously right out, as are the pastries and bread. Or so he thinks until he turned his back on the supplies for five minutes only to turn back and see Caduceus with his head buried in a sack, gnawing busily away at a heel-crust of bread. "Stop! Shoo! That's going to be my breakfast," he hisses, pushing the enormous white cat away with little sweeping motions of his hands; Caduceus goes willingly enough but as soon as Caleb's back is turned he's back in it again. Eventually Caleb has to put the bread in a sack, under a box, weighted down with rocks, on the bed of the cart to keep him out of it.

Fjord is immediately interested in the cheese so Caleb lets him have it. He offers the sausage and jerky to his other companions but although they sniff it with interest (Molly sneezes, liberally spraying the sausages with cat snot,) only Yasha actually seems willing to try it, walking off with a long dried stick of jerky and settling down to gnaw it between canine teeth almost as long as his little finger. The others sniff and nibble for a bit then back off, licking their chops and looking at him expectantly.

Maybe it has too much salt in it? Too many spices? Or perhaps it is too tough. He sets about first washing the meat, then when that is to no avail setting up the camp kettle to boil water. Perhaps he can make a broth or a pate to soften it and make it more palatable. It occurs to him halfway through building up the fire that he is going to a lot of effort to make homemade cat food, but he can't really stop.

As he works on preparing dinner Caduceus keeps pawing at the box that hides the bread. Caleb keeps a wary eye on him and he is not the only one; Nott also crouches nearby and watches with gleaming yellow eyes as Caduceus paws at the box, tries to pry it up, gnaws at the corners, pushes it around on the canvas surface and -- in the end -- gives up and slinks off.

As soon as Caduceus walks away Nott gets up, walks over to the cart, takes a running leap and lands on the canvas sheet with her claws out. Her weight on the cloth pulls it to the edge and drags the box along with it, and box and bread both tumble freely to the ground.

Nott gives Caduceus the most withering glare a cat's face can manage, then turns and walks off. In a flash Caduceus is back at the bread, sticking his face in the bag, and Caleb gives up and lets him have it.

When the food is at last ready Caleb does his best to serve it out in the tin bowls they have, and to his relief his friends seem willing to accept this as an offering. Beau abandons her own portion halfway through in order to go bully Molly away from his meal; while she's busy with this Nott sneaks in and snatches from her dish, already gone by the time Beau turns back. She yowls angrily at the theft, turning back to Caleb to demand more food.

"You brought this on yourself, you know," Caleb tells her, but he spoons out another portion anyway.

Only Jester still will not eat. Caleb does his best to entice her but she just keeps winding around his feet, her cries growing increasingly plaintive. She sniffs at the food stores and tries to sneak in a paw to steal a chocolate muffin but Caleb, feeling an awful tyrant, takes it away from her. "Please _katzchen,_ that would only make you sick," he implores her, but she does not seem inclined to listen.

At last in desperation he sends Frumpkin, who has been sitting on a branch in the overhanging tree and ignoring them all with an air of disdainful superiority, out to forage. Frumpkin returns shortly with news of a quail's nest nearby which he can raid and, after some time more of stumbling around in the dark and tripping over roots, finally offer to Jester as a dish of scrambled eggs. She dives into it almost immediately, purring so hard her whiskers tremble, and Caleb sinks down besides the fire in weary relief.

For his own dinner he ends up eating the apricot preserves straight from the jar with their last remaining spoon. Nott reappears, creeping in at his side with her eyes glowing yellow in the firelight. Caleb sighs. "Another dead bird, _spatz?"_  he says wearily. Nott stops by his feet and sits, tail swishing in a satisfied manner, before she leans down and deposits her newest catch in Caleb's lap.

He was wrong on both counts; it is not a bird, and more to the point it is _not dead._  Caleb jumps to his feet, hopping and swearing, as the lizard... newt... _thing_  Nott released on him wriggles and flops until it manages to turn itself onto its feet, then races up his leg towards what it wrongly assumes is freedom. He brushes it off with frantic swipes of his hands and manages to get it, knocking it onto the ground where it flips around again and then scurries into the darkness.

"You," he says severely, giving Nott a level look and pointed finger, "are a troublemaker _._ "

Nott's expression can only be described as _smug._

Feeding his friends has taken most of the evening and he is still no closer to figuring out a solution to this puzzle. His companions gather around, arranging themselves between him and the fire; chasing the heat against the cold night, no doubt. He lays out the silver thread of his alarm spell around the campsite, wondering even as he does so if there is any point -- if trouble does come upon them he will be alone to face it, and having a few seconds of advance warning will probably not make much difference to his odds. Still the routine soothes him, pulls some semblance of normality from this extremely strange evening.

Replete, warm and content, several of Caleb's friends turn to washing. Jester daintily licks her paws and rubs them over her face, Fjord diligently grooms the white bib on his chest, and Molly sticks one fluffy foot to the sky and begins washing his butt. Caduceus has fallen asleep -- of course -- and Yasha is at the edge of the ring of firelight sniffing at some tiny wildflowers. Nott has vanished again, and Caleb hopes she's just picked a safe place to curl up and sleep and is not out finding more disgusting things to try to feed to him.

He takes a moment now that they are all sitting still to observe them. By all indications they are indeed cats -- they don't seem to be aware of their transformations, or if they are aware they're remarkably un-upset about it -- but no one who knew cats well would mistake them for normal cats, either. Several of them have fur colorations that aren't quite right to those found in nature: Jester's face, ear, and paw markings are a light blue and Caduceus' are creamy-pink. Molly's brindled coat has deep purple strands of fur mixed in with the black and brown, and the black parts of Fjord's tuxedo coat have a dark-green tinge to them. Yasha's fur is free of unnatural colors, but then again there are her eyes.

All of his friends have retained their usual eye colors through the transformation. This looks normal enough on Nott and Fjord with their golden eyes, and there are _some_ cats out there with blue eyes like Beau's. Caduceus' pink eyes combined with his white fur _might_  be an albino; but Jester's violet eyes and Yasha's blue-and-purple ones stand out as distinctly un-feline. To say nothing of Mollymauk. The flat red eyes give him a demonic appearance which would be frightening were he not such a soppy, floppy, lovey mess of a cat. Caleb picked him up earlier to move him out of the cart and Molly had gone so limp and lazy in his grasp that Caleb had been briefly terrified that he'd _died._

A rustle and _thump_  noise grabs Caleb's attention, drawing him out of the dreamy reverie he had fallen into contemplating his new cats. He tenses up, prepared to flee or fight, but he can see nothing --

The _thump thump_ sound comes again, coming from the back of the cart. Caleb stands up (dislodging two cats in the process) and goes to investigate. He finds Beau, pupils wide and ears laid back, chasing her own tail in the back of the cart. She flings herself into the chase as enthusiastically as she ever leaps into a fight, scrambling in circles, doing forward somersaults and rolling around on her haunches like an egg in a bowl.  
Caleb can't help it; he laughs out loud, and the noise startles Beau enough that she lands flat, front feet splayed out, ears flat against her head. She bolts out of the cart as though it were on fire and tears around the campground, churning moss and woodchips underfoot before she finally reaches a tree and races up it.

This seems to be the signal that shatters the calm mood that had fallen over the campsite. Caduceus wakes up suddenly, eyes wide and ears alert, and begins to bristle and growl at what to Caleb's eyes seems to be empty nothingness.

Caduceus stands up and arches his back, seeming to double his already impressive size; his bottlebrush of a tail forms a tense exclamation point to his alarm. The growl grows in intensity, escalating to an eerie throbbing wail, and Caleb is looking wildly around for the source of the danger and seeing _nothing_   as Beau and Molly seem to wake up and focus in on whatever Caduceus is reacting to.

All at once Caduceus takes off, claws flashing in the air as he lunges and swipes, then takes off to the far end of the graveyard and then dashes back. The other two follow him, infected by his excitement, and they fall into a pattern of strike-and-dodge that dizzies him trying to follow it.

"What is happening?" Caleb demands of Frumpkin, who is sitting on the corner of the cart and licking his paw. Frumpkin gives a disinterested glance over at the frantic cats, then returns to his bath. _Ghosts,_  the fae cat sends back over their link, seemingly unconcerned.

" _Ghosts?"_ Caleb yelps. "What _ghosts?"_

_Ghosts._

And that's all he's able to get out of Frumpkin. He tries to get Caduceus to calm down but to no avail; the big, white cat is running around like a maniac fighting invisible foes. Sometime in his attempts to calm Caduceus he realizes Yasha is missing, but he doesn't truly panic about that until he hears a discordant scream coming from the edge of the woods.

"More ghosts?" he demands of Frumpkin, who ignores him. Instead the fae cat stands, stretches, walks over to Nott who had wedged herself into a corner of the cart out of the way of the others, and begins to wash her. Nott screeches and jumps a foot in the air, apparently convinced that Frumpkin has come to collect on those times in the past when she had eaten him.

Caleb sternly orders Frumpkin to back off and is trying to console the distraught little cat when a plaintive meow sounds from the direction of one of the mausoleums, weirdly amplified by the cold marble walls and Caleb scrambles to go investigate. As he does he sees Beau creeping up on Molly, ears fixed forward and eyes intent, and her hindquarters give an ominous little wiggle.

"Don't you _dare,"_  Caleb warns her but to no avail; she launches herself forward in the air, twisting midair to land on her back and slide under Molly with her claws in the air and ready. The two of them fall to tussling, rolling over and over on the ground, and another wail from the mausoleum calls Caleb's attention away from the two of them.

The ruckus from the mausoleum turns out to be Fjord, who went to investigate the stone structure and fell into an unsealed (and, thank the Raven Queen, _unoccupied)_  sepulcher. "What were you even doing in here?" he exclaims, and Fjord yowls pitifully for rescue.

By the time he fetches Fjord out of the grave things have quieted down somewhat; Caduceus has apparently run out of ghosts to fight, and is sprawled out exhausted on Caleb's seat in front of the fire. On his way he passes by Molly, who has apparently discovered the only patch of wild-growing catnip within ten miles and is now lying on his back in the patch of broken stems, feet in the air, red eyes wide. "You _would_ be the one to find the cat drugs, _"_  he says bitterly, but at least it keeps the ex-tiefling out of trouble.

He sets Fjord down in the cart a little more firmly than necessary, then has to stay there petting Fjord until the cat is reassured. He settles down again, reaching out to pick something off his coat as he does so: a sweetgum ball, the type with many little hooked barbs on the end like a caltrop, not exactly sharp but unpleasant to step on. He flicks the little ball away from him and sits, reaching for his abandoned dinner.

Beau bounds up beside him, something in her mouth, and drops it next to his foot. She stands back and looks up at him, giving an expectant yowl.

"What?" he asks. She leans down and picks it up again, nudging it a little closer to him before dropping it, and he recognizes the sweetgum ball he just threw away. "This?" he says incredulously, picking it up, and her eyes go wide as her entire posture draws tense as a bow. He throws the ball again and Beau is off after it like a shot, claws digging against the ground as she races after her new toy.

Thirty seconds later it's back on his foot. "Are you sure you're not a dog?" he wants to know as he picks it up again, but Beau declines to answer that.

Yasha reappears, trotting back from the edge of the woods with her tail in a jaunty arc over her back. Her ear is bleeding slightly and there are tufts of a suspiciously dark, rough-textured fur under her claws.

"Did you get into a fight with a _wolverine?"_  Caleb says incredulously, but Yasha simply sits back down and begins cleaning the fur out of her claws.

Nott returns, sitting pointedly on the other side of Caleb from Frumpkin, who radiates smug amusement over the whole affair. To his horror her mouth is full yet again; what exactly it is he can't clearly tell, but it is long and segmented with far, far too many legs, and it is _wriggling._

"Please don't," he begs her. Nott drops her head and, not breaking eye contact with him the entire time, begins to slowly chew and swallow whatever is in her mouth. Caleb breathes a small silent prayer of thanks to anyone who might be listening that she had not delivered that into his shoe.

A musical _prrrrt_  comes from his left, and he looks over to see Jester rubbing up against his trouser leg. She's been affectionate and cuddly all night, but something seems different; as soon as he looks over at her she hits the ground and begins rolling around and around on the ground, rubbing her shoulders into the dirt before getting up and coming back to rub up against him.

She yowls again, long and loud and plaintive, then arches in a low bow with front feet extended in front of her. Molly, Caduceus and Fjord all look over at her with interest as she rolls again, then comes back to her feet with her tail up high...

"That's it," Caleb announces to the world at large, standing up and jamming the jar of jam back into the haversack. "I am going to _bed."_

He crawls into the tent with his shoes still on, though he does peel off his scarf and fold his coat into something of a cushion for his head. He wraps his scarf around his head to try to block out the sound of Jester's loud, insistent voice outside, and tries to get to sleep.

A rustle of canvas announces the arrival of one of his feline friends -- Molly or Jester, he would assume, come to cuddle up to him -- but instead it's Beau. She climbs up his prone body like a hiker mounting a particularly difficult ridge, marches up his chest, and drops something small and round at the base of his throat. He slaps his hand over it, feels the prickles digging into his hand, and groans.

"Beau, not now, it's late," he mumbles. She huffs, sounding for a moment almost exactly like her human self, and climbs down off him to sit with her back to him and her tail flicking in the exact same cadence her human self would tap one impatient foot, waiting for all the bullshit to be over with so they could get _going_ again.

By all the gods behind the Gate, he hopes he can fix this tomorrow. He wants his friends back.

The night is growing colder, the fire banked down, and as Caleb dozes in the tent -- his mind still filled with worries over what the next day will bring, where he will go, what he can do to try to restore his friends -- one by one the others filter into the tent with him and dispose themselves around him on the bedroll.

Caduceus falls asleep instantly on his torso, a heavy warm weight. Jester pushes her head under his hand, seeking scratches. Nott makes a tight ball against his neck, feeling much like a steadily breathing hot-water bottle. Molly drapes himself over Caleb's head. Fjord lays down against his hip, and Yasha and Beau curl up by his shoulder.

All in all, Caleb thinks as he drifts off to sleep, surrounded by warmth and friendship, there are worse places to be.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Caleb awakes once more in the small hours of the night to a distinctive, rhythmic _hurk-hurk-hurk_  noise from somewhere on the other side of the tent fabric, the sound of a cat ridding itself of a particularly troublesome hairball.

After a moment to think about it, he rolls over and goes back to sleep. He'll deal with it in the morning.

 

~end.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter art by [yettinim.](https://twitter.com/drawsshits)
> 
> soft-magician from Tumblr also drew some fabulous art for the Meowty Nein! Check it out **[here!](https://soft-magician.tumblr.com/post/184612297291/some-fanart-for-this-amazing-critical-role-fic)**
> 
> Baneful Polymorph, 5th edition: “The target is transformed into a beast of challenge rating 1 or lower. … The target is allowed a Constitution saving throw to resist the transformation. After 1 minute, the target receives an additional Constitution saving throw. If it succeeds, it reverts to its normal form; if it fails, it remains an animal. The target can make an additional saving throw after the first hour, the first day and the first month.” As the author, I am declaring that a) the caster of the original spell was high enough level, and Caleb’s rolls just unfortunate enough, that he wasn’t able to dispel them and b) that all seven of them failed their initial, second, and third saving throws (immediate, minute, and hour) and all seven succeed on their third saving throw (day.) So have no fear, Caleb, they’ll all be back to normal this time tomorrow.
> 
> Jester (at top of lungs): CALEB I ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU WOULD HAVE A GREASY HOBO DICK BUT ACTUALLY YOURS IS VERY NICE
> 
> Okay, one fear.
> 
> Molly (sidles up to Caleb): Say, if I lie on your lap and purr, can I get you to rub my belly again?
> 
> ...Two fears.
> 
> Fjord: Let’s immediately go back to that enchanter’s workshop and find the thing that turned us all into cats and poke it again!
> 
> Three fears --


End file.
